|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
The Housing Rights Act of 1968 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
Throughout the spring of 1968, as Martin Luther King, Jr., was helping the Memphis sanitation workers, a major civil rights bill was once again making its way through Congress. The bill was originally designed to extend U.S. Government protection to civil rights workers, but it was amended also to prohibit discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.
The Birmingham protests had launched the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Selma protests had inspired the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but this new housing rights bill resulted mainly from the efforts of Clarence Mitchell, Jr., the Washington director of the NAACP. The bill picked up real speed when Senate Republican leader Everett Dirksen, harkening back to his earlier days as a principal designer and supporter of civil rights bills, put his considerable influence behind the legislation. Prior to Dirksen's announcement of support, three cloture votes on the southern filibuster of the bill had failed to get the required 2/3 majority. On March 4, 1968, with Dirksen now on board, cloture was voted by a super slim 65 to 32 margin. There was not one vote to spare.
The bill then moved to the House of Representatives, where it was believed the bill would be subjected to weakening amendments. Unlike in 1964, when the House was more liberal than the Senate on civil rights issues, the House had grown increasingly conservative as the result of urban riots and black power oratory. After the House weakened the bill, it was thought, a Senate-House conference committee would write a compromise version, which would then be repassed by both houses.
The wave of national remorse over the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., intervened dramatically in this legislative scenario. On April 9, 1968, the day of Martin Luther King's funeral, the House Rules Committee voted to send the housing rights bill directly to the House floor and permit only one hour of debate and no amendments. King's assassination had generated irresistible pressure to pass the strong Senate bill and pass it quickly. The bill passed the House on April 10, 1968, by a vote of 229 to 195. President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, often referred to as the Housing Rights Act of 1968, into law the next day.
The housing rights bill was the last of the three great civil rights acts of the 1960s to be enacted by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the president. Years later observers would look back and see the housing rights act as the final legislative achievement of the civil rights movement. "It was a landmark..., though less a sign of resurgent reform than the coda [closing section of music] to a passing era of legislative gains."
|
|
|
|
|
|
Home
